[88] {208}[For the contention that "the snake was the snake"--no more (_vide post_, p. 211), see _La Bible enfin Expliquée_, etc.; _Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire_, Paris, 1837, vi. 338, note. "La conversation de la femme et du serpent n'est point racontée comme une chose surnaturelle et incroyable, comme un miracle, ou conune une allégorie." See, too, Bayle (_Hist. and Crit. Dictionary_, 1735, ii. 851, art. "Eve," note A), who quotes Josephus, Paracelsus, and "some Rabbins," to the effect that it was an actual serpent which tempted Eve; and compare _Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures_, by the Rev. Alexander Geddes, LL.D., 1800, p. 42.] [89] [Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff, 1782, was appointed Moderator of the Schools in 1762, and Regius Professor of Divinity October 31, 1771. According to his own story (_Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson_, 1817, p. 39), "I determined to study nothing but my Bible.... I had no prejudice against, no predilection for, the Church of England, but a sincere regard for the _Church of Christ_, and an insuperable objection to every degree of dogmatical intolerance. I never troubled myself with answering any arguments which the opponents in the Divinity Schools brought against the articles of the Church, ... but I used on such occasions to say to them, holding the New Testament in my hand, '_En sacrum codicem_! Here is the foundation of truth! Why do you follow the streams derived from it by the sophistry, or polluted by the passions, of man?'" It may be conceived that Watson's appeal to "Scripture" was against the sentence of orthodoxy. His authority as "a school Divine" is on a par with that of the author of _Cain_, or of an earlier theologian who "quoted Genesis like a very learned clerk"!] [90] [Byron breaks through his self-imposed canon with regard to the New Testament. There are allusions to the doctrine of the Atonement, act i. sc. I, lines 163-166: act iii. sc. I, lines 85-88; to the descent into Hades, act i. sc. I, lines 541, 542; and to the miraculous walking on the Sea of Galilee, act ii. se. i, lines 16-20.] [91] {209}[The words enclosed in brackets are taken from an original draft of the Preface.] [92] [The Manichæans (the disciples of Mani or Manes, third century A.D.) held that there were two co-eternal Creators--a God of Darkness who made the body, and a God of Light who was responsible for the soul--and that it was the aim and function of the good spirit to rescue the soul, the spiritual part of man, from the possession and grasp of the body, which had been created by and was in the possession of the spirit of evil. St. Augustine passed through a stage of Manicheism, and in after-life exposed and refuted the heretical tenets which he had advocated, and with which he was familiar. See, for instance, his account of the Manichæan heresy "de duplici terrâ, de regno lucis et regno tenebrarum" (_Opera_, 1700, viii. 484, c; vide ibid., i. 693, 717; x. 893, d. etc.).]